


Relax, Relapse (Ryden)

by kellallyourfriends



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Depression, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 03:37:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8355538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellallyourfriends/pseuds/kellallyourfriends
Summary: Ryan blames himself. It's irrational and he knows it, but he does. In reality, there were a whole host of reasons, none of which were named Ryan Ross, but in his mind it's all his fault. If only he could have been there...This was written in March and was originally posted on Wattpad. On there, it has nine parts, but it's a one-shot here. Don't ask.





	

***RYAN***

I was walking home along Fourth Street, trying not to look like a serial killer while also fighting to force some sort of emotion onto my numb face. Feeling anything seemed impossible. How in the world did I get that smile on my face for my school ID? I remembered that just before that picture had been taken, my friend Patrick had told me a joke concerning Michael Jackson, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama, and a delivery man. Why would that make me happy? Since when did I have the ability to fill the hollow space inside of me?

The road sign in front of me marked the corner of Fourth and Fremont Street, and as I passed the dingy motel I swore I could see the silhouettes of two people in one of the windows. Vaguely, I processed what they must be doing in there. I wondered for a brief moment why they would choose that motel, of all the places, to perform such an activity. Then I realized that places like those are appealing only because they're just that unappealing. My family had to go inside once, to meet a distant cousin, and my aunt, a practiced Catholic, crossed herself upon entering. 

Hmm. Later I should write a song about that. Spencer says I should be a songwriter, the way I think, and recently I've been trying it out. It's actually quite fun, once you get the hang of it. I don't really have that great of a voice, but Brendon

Brendon...

Whereas minutes before I'd been trying to look like I had emotions, now I was trying to keep away the emotions. I guess it all just fell on me at that moment. Just thinking of Brendon, and the way he'd just kind of had the position of lead singer thrown on him, was more than enough to set my tear ducts into overdrive. Because Brendon may never sing again.

I broke into a run, eager to get home before anyone saw me crying. It wasn't far, but it felt like miles. I was either really upset or really out of shape.

Finally, I reached the house I suppose I could technically call my own. Fumbling in my pockets for my key, I unlocked the front door and hoped I was home alone. The door swung open, and...there was no one inside. Good.

I slammed the door behind me, a sob escaping my lips. I made no attempt to stop it, or the subsequent sobs that followed. Brendon would know what to say to make it all right. But Brendon was unconscious in a hospital, and it was my fault. I should have been there to stop him. I should have known what to say to make him stop. But no. I can write a whole song about being critical of modern media consumption, but I can't talk my best friend out of suicide.

There. I said it. Suicide.

He overdosed in the backseat of his parents' car. When they found him he was already unconscious, with Dookie playing in the background and goodbye notes tucked carefully in the air vents. He'd called me just after he did it.

"Ryan?" His voice was shaking.

"Brendon? What's wrong?"

"I need you to talk to me. I feel like I want to hear your voice."

"What is it? Bren, where are you?" I'd asked. He didn't tell me.

"I'm lonely. Why can't I feel anything?" 

"Brendon!" I yelled his name into the phone. No answer. "BRENDON!"

At that point I decided it would be a good idea to call his parents. They told me they'd found the empty pill bottle on the floor of the car and there was a goodbye note specifically addressed to me.

I haven't read it yet. I'm still holding onto the small hope he might actually not die. It doesn't seem likely, but he is still alive. Barely. With that on my mind, I picked myself up off the floor, where I had fallen in a fit of tears (quite the manly man I am), and dragged myself over to the old keyboard I'd gotten for my tenth birthday.

To my surprise, my fingers didn't instantly form the F minor chord I usually immediately went to when I was upset. Instead, they plucked out a surprisingly happy melody in D major. It was pretty. No one would have guessed it came from the boy with the red face and running eyeliner, in the house with the peeling paint and sparking exposed wires outside. I should really call someone about those wires; I could theoretically be electrocuted any day now.

Words? This melody didn't need words to be pretty, but I just sang what came into my head.

"The IV and your hospital bed

This was no accident, this was a therapeutic chain of events"

Whoa. Suddenly I was reminded of Brendon all over again. Shit. I needed a distraction, not another punch in the face from Mr. Your-Best-Friend-Is-Dying. 

Quickly, I put my fingers on the keys again, this time relaxing as they found the familiar F minor chord and its subservient melodies. Briefly, my mind raced as I wondered what to play, but then I settled on my favorite Green Day song, "Holiday". American Idiot had only been out for a month, but I'd already memorized "Holiday" and "Too Much Too Soon".

Before I could start playing, though, I heard the clattering sound of the garage door opening. My dad was home. He'd probably hit me for not starting dinner. I unplugged the keyboard and ran upstairs to my bedroom, because technically I'm not supposed to remember that that keyboard exists. There was an incident with a case of beer a while back, and I'm not supposed to play it anymore. Although, I suspect if my dad was actually serious about that, he would've gotten rid of the keyboard.

***BRENDON***

What's the point?

Adults always say they want you to be yourself. But when you are yourself, they hate you for it. They tell you to embrace who you are, but when who you are is different from who they are, you're "too young to decide". They tell you to stand up for what you believe in until what you believe in is different from what they believe in. So what's the point?

I should be dead right now. They should've had a funeral for me and I should be six feet under with a tombstone that says something like,"Brendon Boyd Urie, April 12, 1987-November 1, 2004. We loved him all his life until he told us he was bi. Now he's burning in hell".

But I'm not. Yay. Now I get to be rejected all over again. I get to be told I'm not worth my parents' time, that I'm an embarrassment to the family, that God hates me. You know, I thought God's whole deal was not hating anyone. Guess everything I learned in Sunday school was wrong.

I didn't even want to tell them in the first place. They heard me serenading Ryan and Spencer and Brent with that really old Green Day song at a band practice and then I was intensely interrogated. They asked me whether my bandmates knew something they didn't. My bi-ness just kind of slipped out.

I was called a lot of names. Sinner. Confused. Greedy, to name a few. "You can't like both, you have to choose". "God says homosexuality is an abomination".

Really, the only reason they didn't kick me out right then and there was because I recited some other Bible verse about providing for your family. But they may as well have disowned me, the way they treated me. If they weren't viciously insulting me at every given opportunity, they were pretending I didn't exist. And my siblings weren't any better. I was stuck and I couldn't see any other way out.

I guess if I'm still alive, there is no way out. It's not like taking a bunch of antidepressants in the back of your parents' car while Longview plays in the background is going to endear you to them. Like, why did I choose pills and a car? "Slipping" out on the railroad tracks would've been a lot easier and with more certain results.

Oh, right. The railroad tracks don't have a place to leave goodbye notes.

I wonder if Ryan's read his yet. If he has, good. Then he knows just how much he means to me. If he hasn't, he probably blames himself. That's just how Ryan is when bad things happen; he'll always find some way to take responsibility. Most of the time he had nothing to do with any of it. Like this time.

What am I going to say to him the next time I see him? Ryan, you've been a good friend and all, but I have depression and ADHD and my family hates me? I don't want to tell him what he already knows. He's seen the self-harm scars and the little blue pills.

Eh, I'll just sing to him.

***RYAN***

At about nine-thirty that evening, I got a call.

In the moments prior to this call, I was sprawled on my bed, my shoulder aching from where my dad had hit me for not starting dinner, staring at the ceiling and wishing Brendon were here to rub my back. I had on Bullets for some reason; usually I don't listen to anything with screaming before bed. My stomach hurt.

Gerard was retching into the microphone when my phone went off. I paused Drowning Lessons and groped around on my bedside table. Shut up already. 

Finally, I found it. I picked up my phone and flipped it open.

It was Brendon.

I hurriedly scrambled for the "take call" option and held the phone to my ear. It took a few seconds for me to process that I actally needed to speak in order to communicate with Brendon, but once I realized that I managed to squeak out a "Hello?"

"I'm sorry, Ryan". His voice sounded like he hadn't used it in a while. Which, I remembered, he probably hadn't. 

"Brendon-"

"I know what you're going to say. It wasn't your fault, you had nothing to do with it. In fact, you were probably the only thing that kept me from doing it sooner".

This is the point at which a natural response is to cry. For the second time that night, I just completely lost it. 

"Should I call back later?"

I reassembled the shattered objects that were my emotions just long enough to say, "No. No. I'll just visit you tomorrow?"

"Yes. That would be great. Te amo."

He hung up.

I turned Bullets back on and fell asleep before the tears on my face had a chance to dry.

The nightmares came back that night. The ones involving Brendon standing in a pit of flames. I try to save him, but I find I can't move. "Ryan, why won't you help me?" he yells. "I thought you were my friend."

I attempt to justify myself, but I can't speak either. The flames consume him and move out of the pit towards me. They lick at the toes of my shoes; the fabric catches and I scream the same way Brendon did when this fate befell him.

I woke up sweating.

This wasn't a new nightmare. I'd had it many times before, but it always received the same reactions. My two worst fears-fire and losing Brendon-combined into one surreal scenario is enough to put me into a state of paralyzing fear. So that just means I have to lie in bed staring at the ceiling for a good twenty minutes before I actually get dressed. Then when I do get dressed, I have to thoroughly examine myself for burns. It's not weird. Don't worry about me. The lack of bruises and contusions always remind me what I did when I wake.

My dad had already left by the time I gained enough motivation to go downstairs. Sweet. I went down to my keyboard and plugged it back in. Then I plinked out last night's melody, the words still burned in my mind. But this time I didn't stop the first time thoughts of Brendon surfaced in my mind. I kept going on with the song, even though I didn't really know what I was writing.

"It's not so pleasant and it's not so conventional

It sure as hell ain't normal, but we deal, we deal"

I stopped for a minute to frantically ransack the living room for my notebook and write it all down. It might not seem like much of a deep revelation, but that's just the way I think. In crazy metaphors and oddly obvious declarations like that one. My notebook was on top of the fridge.

I began the writing process. If I actually finished this one, it'd be the third one I'd ever written. I've done one called Time To Dance, and another one called London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines.

"You're a regular decorated emergency"

Was this song about Brendon? I couldn't tell at that point. Usually the words just flow into my head and I don't realize I've written a political statement into them or something like that until I'm halfway through composing the melody or something like that.

I wish I was as good a lyricist as Pete Wentz. Hell, even Patrick Stump is a better writer than me. Patrick wrote Saturday when he was like seventeen. I'm eighteen and I couldn't write a song to match Saturday if my life depended on it. Sex.

Should I go now? I checked the clock above the oven. 10:30. Okay, sure. I put on pants and my coat and headed into the garage, where that thing I can kind of consider my car is stored.

Technically it's a car, but a more fitting title for it would be a fucking piece of junk. I got it for my sixteenth birthday, because that's not cliché at all, and it used to be my dad's. It'll have to do until I can save up enough money to buy a better one.

I put the key in the ignition and started the fucking piece of junk up. Driving. Yeah. That's a thing I do. I'm not very good at it, but the other drivers on the road just have to deal. I need to get to the only person I care about right now. 

The hospital Brendon was at was a long way away, so I decided to turn the radio on. I prayed for some good music, but the radio DJs or whatever you call them have no taste whatsoever. I would've put in a CD, but I was already fifteen minutes away from my house and I'd forgotten to bring any. Forget the radio, I'll sing.

With the windows rolled up, so no one hears me singing to myself alone in the fucking piece of junk.

***BRENDON***

Hospitals are fucking boring.

All you do is just lie in bed and no one talks to you or anything unless they need to assault you with stabby things. I basically just did nothing but stare at the ceiling after I woke up.

That one nurse said I'd been out for two days. She wasn't surprised. Apparently that's a very common suicide method for people my age. 

Then she proceeded to loudly point out my scars and how I need to take care of myself better. For some reason she was surprised when I death-glared her out the door.

Ryan walked in just as she left.

"Hey," I said.

He stared at me like I was totally out of my head (which I was, but don't bring that up). "Hey? HEY? You got in that car and did what you did, and you made me WORRY for TWO WHOLE DAYS and the first thing you say to me is HEY? HEY like EVERYTHING'S NORMAL and you DON'T HATE ME-"

"Ry, chill. I don't hate-"

"WELL, YOU SHOULD!"

"RYAN!"

He stopped talking.

"Why do you get like this? If anything, it's my fault. I'm so fucking messed up-"

"Hey." Ryan sat down in the crappy chair by my bed. "Don't say that."

"Well, then what am I supposed to say?"

"Dunno."

"Goddamn it, Ryan, I thought you were trying to reenact every stupid rom-com ever until you said that."

He laughed. "Fuck you."

"I love you too."

His laugh faded, but the smile still remained. "I kinda wrote another song."

I sat up a bit more. "Cool! Can I see it?"

Reluctantly, he handed his notebook to me and I flipped through it until I found a song I hadn't seen. "This it?" He nodded.

I started skimming through the lyrics.

Wow.

This is some deep shit.

"What's this about?"

He took a deep breath. "You, partially. And also my dad. It's not done yet; I still need to fix the verses."

"You mean the few blank lines right before 'It's not so pleasant, and it's not so conventional?'"

"Yeah."

I thought for a moment. "What about:

This is the scent of dead skin on a linoleum floor

This is the scent of quarantine wings in a hospital?"

Ryan hastily scribbled my lines in without hesitation. "Do you want to do that for the second verse too, or something else?"

I didn't have to think about it as hard this time.

"The anesthetic never set in and I'm wondering where

The apathy and urgency is that I thought I phoned in"

"How do you come up with this stuff?"

"I just really hate hospitals."

"Tell me about it."

Ryan and I kept working on that song for at least an hour. It may have been two. I lost track of time, which is just something that happens with Ryan.

We were just about done when the hater nurse from this morning came back in. She was carrying a tray, and I was pretty certain I was about to be assaulted with a stabby thing.

Sure enough, she was one of those nurses who never seems to be able to get your vein on the first try.

Spoiler alert: I made Ryan hold my hand.

***RYAN***

Goddamn Brendon almost broke my fingers.

I had to leave after that, as I had spent a very long time with Brendon and my dad would definitely be waiting at home. I'd be hit again, of course, because what's more important than visiting a depressed friend in the hospital after his suicide attempt? My fucking dad's liquor supply.

I drove home in the fucking piece of junk, singing to myself again with the windows rolled up. I now had a completed song, which made three total. No one outside of our band cared, but it gave me a feeling of satisfaction knowing that I'd completed three totally unique songs. Three more steps toward actually being a thing. 

That's what I wanted, more than anything else.

Brendon was let out of the hospital five days later. 

The night he was released, I drove my fucking piece of junk over to his house and we sat on his couch, eating chips and watching Disney movies. His family, conveniently, wasn't home. If they were, they'd probably have pepper-sprayed me as soon as I pulled up in the driveway. And they say he's going to hell.

About halfway through The Little Mermaid, Brendon leaned his head on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "You're not straight, are you?"

I blushed (that little shit). "No."

Brendon snuggled up closer, and because he's shorter and younger than me, he can get away with that kind of stuff. "Girls are pretty. But you're prettier."

"Fuck, Bren, I think that was the most cliché thing you've ever said."

"What? You're very pretty."

"That I won't deny."

He moved in until he was almost sitting on my lap and sighed. "I hate my family."

"I know."

"And I hate really everything else. Except you. I even hate this movie. Why are we watching it?"

"Dude, you're the one who suggested it."

"Well, why'd you listen to me?"

"I like you."

"Why?"

That kind of took me off guard. "There are a million reasons why."

He shook his head. "Now you're the one sounding cliché."

I kissed him.

For a second, his eyes widened. Then they closed, and my eyes closed, and all I could feel was Brendon. This is what happens when words fail you, and in my opinion, Brendon is much better than words.

It was so unbelievably hard to pull away from him, but eventually I had to. He didn't move any farther away from me, just stayed within six or seven inches of my face. The Little Mermaid was still playing in the background, which I found slightly ridiculous given the circumstances. Brendon stared into my eyes, and I (dumbly) realized that I was his first kiss.

He wasn't mine, of course. I'd done my share of experimenting. But I've got about six more months of experience than him. He's got time.

"Ryan, what-" he choked. "What do you see in me? I'm a wreck."

I swallowed. "I see a lot of things. Your smile, for one. It lights up the room."

Brendon started to cut me off, but I beat him to it. "And you can sing like a fucking angel. And you always have so much energy, like, you can never sit still. I love that for some reason."

"I hate that. Everyone makes fun of me at school for that."

"I also love when you talk about the things you like, like Blink-182, and your eyes just light up."

"I'm still a wreck."

"Yeah, Brendon, but you're my wreck."

"Back at it with the clichés, are we?"

"It may be cliché, but it's true."

He didn't reply to that, but I didn't need him to. All I needed him to do was sit on the sofa and cuddle up next to me, and watch stupid movies and eat all his family's popcorn for the rest of the night.

And maybe start therapy while he's at it, too.


End file.
